A SPELL of good weather should last through the week, forecasters said yesterday.

Following a damp weekend, sunny days with some cloud should be the pattern from today to Friday, said the Shanghai Meteorological Bureau.

Today is set to be cloudy, with the temperature ranging from a low of 3 degrees Celsius and a high of 7 degrees.

Tomorrow should be sunny, with similar temperatures, due to the influence of a high pressure front.

From Wednesday, the high should climb slightly to 8 degrees, but the low will drop to 1 degree in downtown, and lower in suburban areas.

Then on Thursday, the temperature is set to rise to 9 degrees, with a low of 2 degrees.

The bureau advised residents to remember that there is a sizeable gap between daytime and night temperatures.

The local environmental monitoring center forecast that today’s air quality will be good — ranging from 55 to 100 on the air quality index.

Shanghai among top 50 cities with China’s worst air

Shanghai ranks 48th among the 74 Chinese cities that adopted a new national air quality monitoring system last year, with the city’s annual PM2.5 density nearly double the national standard, according to a survey released yesterday.

Shanghai’s annual average PM2.5 density was 60.7 micrograms per square meter last year, compared to the national standard of 35, environmental organization Greenpeace reported.

PM2.5 refers to airborne particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers in diameter that are the cause of urban smog and hazardous to health.

Greenpeace said that, in December, Shanghai’s PM2.5 density peaked at 421 micrograms per square meter, five times the daily standard of 75.

The Greenpeace report was based on data from China’s Environmental Protection Ministry website as well as environmental protection bureaus in the 74 cities.

The Yangtze River Delta region has seen increasingly severe air pollution in recent years that has affected the air quality in Shanghai.

Vehicle and factory emissions accounted for 50 percent of the city’s pollution, followed by dust from construction sites (10.5 percent), power stations (7.3 percent) and straw burning (10 percent).